Firestorm (1998)

reviewed by
Jon Popick


PLANET SICK-BOY: http://www.sick-boy.com

WOW - Talk about divine intervention. About 55 minutes into my screening of `Firestorm', the tape broke or got wound up on the reel or something. The manager said it was unfixable, so not only did I not have to suffer through the rest of this silly film, I also received a free ticket to another film and got home in time to watch prime time television. Needless to say, things could not have gone better.

What I did get to see wasn't much. There was a brief description of what a `Smokejumper' was before the pictures came on. At first, I thought it might have been a disclaimer, like at the end of `Mr. Magoo'. I always secretly wished that they would do that with really bad movies. You know, something like this:

`The people at [studio name here] would like to apologize for the film you are about to see. When we started production, it seemed like such a good idea. But when we got the finished product, we were disappointed. Very disappointed. Unfortunately, it was way too late to do anything about it. We had already paid for it, so we released it. Now that we got your money, we felt we could be honest. Thank you for your support and we hope that you enjoy our next film.'

Anyway, from the opening scene, we learn that a smokejumper is a kind of person who parachutes out of a plane into a forest fire. Jesse Graves (Long) is this kind of person. So is Wynt Pekins (Glenn), but he is the chief smokejumping person. After Graves cuts down a tree for no apparent reason, he and Glenn rush toward a burning cabin to rescue a little girl trapped inside. They get her and her little dog out just before a burning tree crushes the cabin, but are completely surrounded by the fire as they run out. So Graves whips out a big piece of aluminum foil to cover Glenn, the girl and himself, but not the dog. Now I always thought that foil made things cook faster, but this was no ordinary foil. This was special smokejumper foil and the fire went right over it, just like the nuclear fallout did in those `Duck & Cover' spots they used to show to kids in the 50's. The dog miraculously survives.

I know that sound exhilarating enough, but there's more to this film than fighting fires and magic foil. There are also bad people in this film. The bad people start out in jail, but then they escape when Randy Earl Shave (William Forsythe) dies his hair, gives himself a temporary tattoo and sticks a guy in the neck with a knife. When I was in jail, they wouldn't give us any temporary tattoos until the hair dye had washed out, just to avoid this type of prison break. I must have gone to a really good prison. I didn't escape until they put me on an airplane full of other convicts and we took control of the plane and landed on the Las Vegas strip. But that's another story…

There was also a wildlife photographer played by Suzy Amis (`Titanic'). Her character only got to be in one scene before fate stepped in and broke the film.

`Firestorm' is the directorial debut of Dean Semler, the Oscar winning cinematographer of `Dances With Wolves' fame. Ironically, the cinematographer for this film is Stephen F. Windon, who is also responsible for the equally reprehensible, but more recent Kevin Costner self-love fes, `The Postman'.

As far as fire for entertainment goes, the `Backdraft' ride at Universal Studios was more entertaining. But I didn't see the whole thing, so what do I know? Benjamin Harrison was an appropriate rating because his presidency ended before we could truly evaluate it.


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